New Survey on Muslim Americans

The Pew Research Center just released a survey on Muslim in America entitled “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream” which collected information ranging from religious beliefs to thoughts about foreign policy and terrorism. The survey is over 100 pages long so here are some interesting highlights, which contain very distorded information. (Statistics about Muslims in European, African, and Middle Eastern Countries and about Christians in the United States come from other surveys conducted by the Pew center in 2006).

One important issue the survey asked about was Islamic extremism and suicide bombings. According to the poll, Muslim Americans are more likely to reject Islamic extremism than Muslims who live in Europe. When asked the question “Can suicide bombings of civilian targets to defend Islam be justified?” 1% answered often, 7 % said sometimes, 5 % said rarely, and 78% said never. (53) Also, “younger Muslim in the U.S. are more likely than older Muslim Americans to express a strong sense of Muslim identity, and are much more likely to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified.” (1)

Muslims in France, Spain, and Great Britain are twice as likely to say suicide bombings are justified (around 16%), while 46% of Muslims in Nigeria answered often/sometimes and in Jordan and Egypt around 28% answered often/sometimes. (53) Therefore, the survey concludes that “absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.” (1,2)

When it comes to assimilation, “the survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. With the exception of very recent immigrants, most report that a large proportion of their closest friends are non-Muslims." (2) In addition, when asked if they thought of themselves first as Muslim or American, 47% answered Muslim. Interestingly, according to another Pew Center poll, in Britain 81% of Muslims see themselves as Muslim first while 42% of Christians view themselves as Christians first. (31)

Concerning the issue of Israel, the survey found that 61% of Muslim Americans say that a way can be found for the state of Israel to exist so that the rights of the Palestinians are addressed. (55) Only 16 percent said that “the rights and needs of the Palestinians cannot be taken care of as long as Israel exists”, which is low compared to the response to this question in Morocco, 90%, and Lebanon, 75%.

The survey also compares Muslim practices with Christian practices. One of the questions asked was "Is the Koran/Bible the literal word of God?" 86% of Muslims said the Koran is the word of God, and 50% said it is literally word for word, while 78% of Christians said the Bible if the word of God, and only 40% say that it is literally word for word. 72% of Muslims said that religion was very important in their lives, compared to 60% of Christians.

These are only a few issues that the survey covers. It also asks questions about issues such as President Bush, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and views on homosexuality. You don’t need to read the whole document, you can just look at the boxes with the survey information on each page. The survey can be found here.